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New Volume Control Interface For GNOME

01-14-2009, 08:30 AM

Phoronix: New Volume Control Interface For GNOME

One of the items being worked on by Red Hat for Fedora 11 is making the GNOME volume control and sound preferences area more intuitive and easier to use. With Fedora and most other distributions now using PulseAudio, they are beginning to take advantage of some of the features available through this sound server. Some of this work involves reworking the user interface for controlling GNOME Sound Preferences, which we are providing a glimpse of in this article. Among other benefits, there is finally the ability to adjust the volume level on a per-application basis.

Other than that, it looks pretty good, though I do hope apps linger in the tab for a while, so if it plays a short sound at full volume, I'd like to be able to change it after the fact, so it doesn't wake the neighbors next time.

PS. This kind of change on such a fundamental control should be forbidden unless a proper usability review is undertaken showing that the usability is improved.

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This would be awesome if you could simply use the mouse wheel to up/down the volume without getting confused with all the directions...

Do I detect a hint of sarcasm?

Yes, I know my wheel turns the volume up/down. My mother probably doesn't, and she's pretty good at figuring things out. She tells me horror stories such as people attaching 20 files to an email one at a time at her work.

Just because it's possible doesn't mean
a) it's known,
b) it's obvious if it's not known, or
c) it's a good idea to change established practices just because someone feels like it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is there any other significant OS where the master volume control is horizontal?

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First, i want to address previous post.
You can use scroll wheel when your cursor over volume applet.
No real need to open it. Same with amarok tray icon.

And now the interesting questions.
1. Balance control is nice, but what if you have more channels ? like 5.1 or 7.1 which is kind of standard ?

What about things like assigning output/input device on per application basis ? For example, I have HP xw4300 as my HTPC. It has integrated sound card with integrated speaker which is very good for things like Skype (ringing) and using it with front panel input/output jacks, but things like movies, music games and more, i want through dedicated sound card.
It is configurable now in some applications, and some working with gnome sound settings, but there is now easy way that i found to switch output device on the fly for some application. For example,I browsing net on HTPC and my browser sound outputted through integrated soundcard, but then i open some online radio (like last.fm) and i want to turn on my receiver and switch output device.
Currently it takes a lot of effort.
Will this things addressed in this redesign ?

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Linux audio is in a sorry state. I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels that audio was better a year ago than it is today. I have seen more than one distro now tout "rock solid audio" or the like, and I have yet to get stable skype or flash audio. Some of you might direct me to a forum where it describes the 100 steps it takes to get these things working, but I don't want to have to do that. It should work. I read a nice blog that described exactly how I felt in more technical terms here: http://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2009/...-on-linux.html .